by the act of reproducing it the struggle passed into their minds, and
then, instead of imitating, they created. Then they themselves made
the two elements contend; they increased the darkness to startle and
disperse it with every manner of luminous effects and flashes of
light; sunbeams stole through the gloom and then gradually died away;
the reflections of twilight and the mellow light of lamps were
delicately blended into mysterious shadows, which were animated with
confused forms which one seems to see and yet cannot distinguish. So
under their hands the light presents a thousand fancies, contrasts,
enigmas, and effects of shine and shade as unexpected as they are
curious. Prominent in this field, among many others, were Gherard Dou,
the painter of the famous picture of the four candles, and Rembrandt,
the great wonder-working superhuman enlightener.

Another of the most striking characteristics of Dutch painting is
naturally color. It is generally recognized that in a country where
there are no distant mountains, no undulating views, no prominent
features to strike the eye--in short, no general forms that lend
themselves to design--the artist is strongly influenced by color. This
is especially true in the case of Holland, where the uncertain light
and the vague shadows which continually veil the air soften and
obscure the outlines of objects until the eye neglects the form it
cannot comprehend, and fixes itself on color as the chief quality that
nature possesses. But there are yet other reasons for this: a country
as flat, monotonous, and gray as Holland is has need of color, just as
a southern country has need of shadow. The Dutch artists have only
followed the dominant taste of the people, who paint their houses,
their boats, their palisades, the fences of the fields, and in some
places the very trunks of the trees, in the brightest colors; who
dress themselves as of yore in clothes of the gayest hues; who love
tulips and hyacinths to distraction. Hence all the Dutch painters were
great colorists, Rembrandt being the first.

Realism, favored by the calm and sluggish nature of the Dutch, which
enables their artists to restrain their impetuosity, and further aided by
the Dutch character, which aims at exactness and refuses to do things by
halves, gave to the paintings of the Hollanders another distinctive
trait--finish. This they carried to the last possible degree of
perfection. Critics say truthfully that in